I don't mean to poo-poo the Ancient Greeks "originality" but, hey, everybody tends to use what he finds best and available. And as you've seen "continuous improvement" knows no rights of possession.Hope you don't mind my stomping accross your posts and their subject matter.
Not at all, unspun! I've already indicated that I think the great Greeks did in fact overplay Mind at the expense of Spirit. But being Greek, they were just doing "what came naturally" to them; for the great Greeks were, preeminently, thinkers. That doesn't mean they weren't aware of Spirit. It just wasn't their "most interesting problem."
Man is not just mind (nous). He is heart-and-mind -- as you suggested in a recent post. He is pneuma and nous both.
Have you read Blaise Pascal's Pensées? I'll bet you'd love Pascal. Like you (presumably), he regards passion -- thoughts coupled with feelings arising in the body -- as the essence of the human condition. The very formula of his definition (just given) bespeaks the intimate, irreducible integration of mind and spirit in Man. Not to flog a dead horse, but for Plato, to emphasize mind over heart (or spirit) represents a particular shift and focus of attention. This is different from the experience of our own time, where we see a fatal tendency of separating the two absolutely, with questions of the heart denigrated, and mind -- Reason -- made absolute. Arguably Plato never did this. And I strongly doubt he would regard this dualistic "divorce" as a healthy thing.
To try to make this issue plain: Pascal makes the distinction between two types of mind, one rigid and inflexible (the "geometer's mind"), the other open to the mysterious complex of total being ("intuitive mind" -- "supple and born with the impulse to love, especially what is beautiful," as Jacques Barzun has described Pascal's intent in his elucidation of the subject in Pensées). Pascal does not regard these two modes as either-or propositions or "classifiable types." Rather, both can coexist in the single mind of any individual.
Barzun presents this case brilliantly (IMHO) in From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present (New York: Harper Collins, 2000). So I will simply quote him at length:
"By geometrical [mind], Pascal means the mind when it works with exact definitions and abstractions in science and mathematics; by intuitive, the mind when it works with ideas and perceptions not capable of exact definition. A right-angle triangle or gravitation is a perfectly definite idea; poetry or love or good government is not definable. And this lack of definition is not due to lack of correct information; it comes from the very nature of the subject.
" 'Geometrical' matters are handled by all good minds without any argument over their interconnections, and mistakes in reasoning are quickly noticed and readily admitted by the culprit; whereas in matters of intuition...the details to take in are so numerous and fugitive that reasoning about them is chancy and good minds arrive in all honesty at different conclusions. Pascal might have added that this large number of elements rules out the use of Decartes' method: one can never be sure of having found all the parts of the problem or of having put back [as in the final stage of a jig-saw puzzle, i.e., its completion] all those one thinks one has found -- no complete analysis is possible of Love or Ambition.
"It is from this incapacity that the belief in science and mathematics as the only forms of truth has arisen. Such has been the faith of most scientists and mathematicians, who in turn have persuaded the people that apart from their experimental findings and deducings all is mere opinion, error, and fantasy. Even so, in every generation, thinkers -- including some notable scientists -- have maintained that the geometrical spirit and the method of Descartes do not apply to everything. Truths of a different order are attainable by finesse [i.e., intuition], even if consensus is lacking. The language iteself recognizes the source of the distinction: to know and to know about express the difference between intimate awareness and things learned. Some languages in fact use different words for the contrast: wissen and kennen, savoir and connaître. Man as scientist has come to know a great deal, but as human being knows and feels intuitively love and ambition, poetry and music. The heart-and-mind reaches deeper than the power of reason alone.
"Longing for unanimity in belief is understandable. The bloody conflicts of the world have their source in the realm of finesse, and to deplore the fact leads to such skepticism as Montaigne's. It is also the best argument for toleration. But although the realm of finesse does not yield unshakable conclusions, it is not alone in variability. Science is continually revising its declarations and at no time do its practitioners fully agree with one another. The unbroken confidence in it rests on the fixity of the objects defined, which makes every worker talk about the same thing and deal with it in the same way, thanks to numbers. But not even this amiable rigor ensures eternity to the results of its application. Still, when by a combination of science and finesse, useful inventions are created and benefit the common life, the public is doubly convinced that science has the monopoly of truth.
"The two 'minds' that Pascal describes do not constitute two species of individuals. They are but two directions that one human mind can take. Pascal himself is proof that one can be a great geometer and a profound intuiter. And in fact any good mind properly taught can think like Euclid and like Walt Whitman. The Renaissance...was full of such minds, equally competent as poets and engineers. The modern notion of 'two cultures,' incompatible under one skull, comes solely from the proliferation of specialties in science; but these also divide scientists into groups that do not understand one another, the cause being the sheer mass of detail and the diverse terminologies. In essence the human mind remains one, not 2 or 60 different organs.
"What, then, is the importance of Pascal's distinction? It is as an axiom for the critic and a warning against SCIENTISM. Ten succinct paragraphs of the Pensées state it with finality. Scientism is the fallacy of believing that the method of science must be used on all forms of experience and, given time, will settle every issue. [Bold added to this "best statement" of the fundamental premise of scientism I've ever come across.] Again and again, the bright thought has occurred, 'If we can only define our terms, if we can only find the basic unit, if we can spot the right <indicators>, we can then measure and reason flawlessly....'
"The motives behind scientism are culturally significant. They have been mixed, as usual: genuine curiosity in search of the truth; the rage for certainty and for unity; and the snobbish desire to earn the label scientist when that became a high social and intellectual rank. But these efforts, even though vain, have not been without harm, to the inventors and to the world at large. The 'findings' have inspired policies affecting daily life that were enforced with the same absolute assurance as earlier ones based on religion. At the same time, the workers in the realm of intuition, the gifter finessers -- artists, moralists, philosophers, historians, political theorists, and theologians -- were often diverted from their proper task, while others were looking on them with disdain as dabblers in the suburbs of Truth. The case of Karl Marx is typical. Infatuated with the kudos of science, he persuaded himself and his millions of followers in and out of the Sooviet Union that he had at last formulated the mechanics of history and could predict the future scientifically....
"The clue to the fallacy of SCIENTISM is this: geometry (in all senses of the term) is an ABSTRACTION from experience; it could not exist without the work of the human mind on what it encounters in the world. Hence the realm of abstraction, useful and far from unreal, is thin and bare and poorer than the world it is drawn from. It is therefore an idle dream to think of someday getting along without direct dealings with what abstraction leaves untouched. The meaning of this contrast is that the enterprise of science has its limits.
"Pascal does not stop at showing the difference between the two distinct grips that the human mind has on the world. In a widely quoted passage he adds: 'The heart has reasons that the reason does not know.' The heart here is not merely the seat of affections; it is desire in general, the impulses to action, and Reason is the discriminating servant that carries out some of them. Note that the word reason in the dictum is used in two senses: the reasons of the heart -- its needs and motives -- are not products of reasoning, or there would be no spontaneity in conduct, no sympathy, friendship, or love in the world.... [Pascal quips,] 'Whoever tries to turn angel turns beast,' punning on bête, which also means stupid....
"[F]or Pascal it is precisely the uncertainty arising from human truths that requires taking refuge in the bosom of God....
"For Pascal, man is miserable and great. On the scale of the universe, he is puny -- 'a drop of water can kill him; he is a feeble reed.' But he is a 'thinking reed.' The blind universe destroys him and all his works, but he is conscious -- he knows that which is stronger than he; that is why the silence of space fightens him. Yet thought (and here one includes science) remains master of that which does not know its own size and power."
* * * * * * *
That 'the silence of space fightens him' Pascal freely admits in Pensées: "the eternal silence of this infinite space frightens me." In this, as Barzun notes, he was "seeing the cosmos like an existentialist -- empty, bleak, and meaningless. How had all these rotating spheres come to be? Why all this void? And how absurd was that enigma, Man!... God's design was inscrutible."
Yet pace Jesse Ventura, who famously said that "religion is only a crutch for the weak": For Pascal, "Christ was the sole link with Meaning, and Christ's message was forgiveness and love. The divine was no abstract essence in which to merge for the ecstasy of forgetting self [which is the essence and goal of mysticism]; it was the living God [the God of the Presence -- Christ]. His miracles were all humane in purpose, and the miracle and mystery of His existence mediated for man the mystery of the infinite space and silence of creation."
In other words, the Unknown tetragrammatical God is perfectly inscrutible to the human mind. But Christ as divine mediator brings man into harmony with what Is, and alone gives man his place and meaning in the universe.
Though he died young (39) and was in poor health most of his life, Pascal was no weakling, but truly a strong man, heart and mind. And also a very great man, as both scientist and humanist.
I meant to ping you to #153 in order to illustrate the vastness of the field of human experience that Ayn Rand has edited out of Reality. In my humble opinion, FWIW.
...and I can't imagine how I could have left you off my bump list to #153, general_re! Please allow me to rectify this regrettable omission here.
Listen...